It was some time since the last post but I needed some vacation, both from the game development and blogging 🙂 Sometimes one just needs a break, right?

I wanted to tell you about a game I initially had some problems with. At first, I didn’t quite like the character model, graphical setting and animations to the point everything seemed artificial and, I don’t know, plastic? But then I convinced myself to go forward and every moment of it was worth my time.

I am talking about “The Lost Crown: The Ghost hunting adventure” by Jonathan Boakes. The game takes us to the English town of Saxton, where as a ghost-hunter Nigel Danvers we try to find a Lost Crown of Anglia. The thing is , Nigel is a paranormal investigator and as such is a somewhat a weird character. Quite soon the player discovers that all other characters are also weird…I know what you are thinking – “Twin Peaks” right? Not really, because Saxton has a distinctive Anglo-Saxon charm. It’s not only bizarre, it’s really unsettling. Regular folks seem to be strangely absent, following their own strange agendas and all of this seems like a really onirical (dream-like) setting. I realized animation stiffness adds to the picture, as well as the fact almost everything in game is black&white, except some really interesting objects and animals like e.g. dragonflies in the marsh, which seem strangely “we do not belong here” because of that.

The very first time Nigel actually sets up his ghost hunting equipment and start listening to the wavelengths kept me really on edge. Oh, I know – we all hate jumpscares. They are cheap and silly. “The Lost Crown” doesn’t do that often, it does that precisely when it needs to, and I am really thankful for that! Nigel’s ghost hunt, explorations and conversations with denizens lead him to some really unsettling discoveries, during which two worlds start to intertwine and collide. I will not spoil it for you, but after some time the player start to notice a fact that not everything is as it seems in Saxton.

I still remember the plot line, the puzzles, the events from this game, even though it was several years since I completed it (5?). I could really appreciate it back then and now…Oh, how I now know how difficult the process of being a sole gamedev is! When I see the marvelous work Jonathan Boakes placed in his games (Because “The Lost Crown” has also a special called “The Midnight Horror”, and the prequel called “Blackenrock” is on the way) I cannot do anything else but say “a very great job, Sir!”

You can get it on Steam.

Visit: http://www.thelastcrown.com/ and Jonathan’s blog: http://jonathanboakes.blogspot.com/